Parashat Ki Teitzei — Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19
This week's Torah portion holds more mitzvot than any other — seventy-four of them, one after the next, with barely a breath in between.
And what strikes me every year is how small most of them are. There's no burning bush here. No sea splitting. Instead: a lost animal wandering on the road. A railing on a roof. A bird's nest. A forgotten bundle of wheat left standing in a field. The kind of things you would walk past on an ordinary Tuesday without thinking twice.
Which is exactly the point. Ki Teitzei is the parashah that says holiness isn't waiting for you somewhere impressive. It's in what you do when nobody's watching and it would be so easy to keep walking.
"You may not look away"
There's one line in here I carry with me all year.
The Torah describes something completely mundane: you're walking, and you see something that belongs to someone else — a wandering animal, a dropped coat, anything lost. And it tells you, plainly, to bring it back. Then it adds four words that go far beyond a lost donkey:
"Lo tuchal l'hit'alem" — "you may not hide yourself." (Deuteronomy 22:3)
You may not look away.
Not "you shouldn't." Not "it would be nice if you didn't." You are not able to. As if the Torah is telling us that once you've seen — really seen — you've already been implicated. The seeing is the beginning of the responsibility.
And it's such an honest verse, because it names the thing we actually do. We don't usually refuse to help. We just… don't notice. We make ourselves not notice. We get busy, we look at our phones, we decide someone else is closer. Hit'alem — to hide yourself. Usually the person we're hiding from is ourselves.
The railing on the roof
A few verses later comes one of my favourite laws in the entire Torah.
"When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof" (Deuteronomy 22:8) — a ma'akeh, a small railing around the flat roof where people sat in the evening, so that no one could fall.
Your house. Your roof. Your own money and your own hands. For a guest who may never come, who you may never meet, whose name you'll never know.
That's the whole Jewish idea in one building instruction: your safety is my responsibility. Not as a feeling — as a structure. Something you build into the walls before anyone is standing on them.
Ki Teitzei is full of this. Leave the forgotten sheaf standing in the field for the stranger, the orphan, the widow — don't go back for it (Deuteronomy 24:19). Send the mother bird away before you take from the nest. Don't muzzle the ox while it works. Keep honest weights in your bag, the true stone and the true measure — no second set for when it suits you.
None of these are grand. All of them are about the same thing: noticing the one who has less power in the room, and building something so they don't fall.
Why now, in Elul
It's no accident that we read this in Elul, with Rosh Hashanah already visible on the horizon.
Because lo tuchal l'hit'alem works in both directions. This is the month we stop hiding from ourselves, too. Not with a long list of everything we did wrong — Elul was never meant to be a courtroom. Just the small, brave act of looking directly at the year behind us instead of glancing past it.
What did I walk past this year? Who did I mean to call? What did I see, and quietly decide wasn't mine to pick up?
And on the other side of that question: what did I carry that I never gave myself credit for? Because looking honestly means seeing the good, too.
Teshuvah, in the end, is just turning around and going back for the thing you left on the road.
Zachor
The parashah closes on a different note, and I want to hold it gently.
"Zachor et asher asah lecha Amalek" — remember what Amalek did to you — how he came upon us on the road, exhausted and weary, and struck at the ones who were falling behind, the stragglers at the back. The ones who couldn't keep up. And it ends: lo tishkach. Do not forget. (Deuteronomy 25:17–19)
We know something about that now, in a way we did not need to explain to each other a few years ago.
But look at where the Torah places it — at the end of seventy-four laws about returning what is lost, about railings and open hands and the ones at the back of the camp. The answer to a world that preys on the vulnerable isn't only memory. It's the parapet. It's the sheaf left standing. It's refusing to look away from each other.
Remembering, and then building.
Something to carry
We are not asked to fix the whole world this week. We're asked to notice one thing and not walk past it.
Send the message. Make the call. Say the name out loud. Pick up what's been left on the road and carry it back to whoever lost it.
That's my blessing for us, going into this last stretch of Elul: that we would have eyes that stay open, and hands that don't stay closed — for each other, and for ourselves.
Shabbat Shalom. 🤍
With love,
Rivkah
We made a small gift for this season — The Elul Guide, a free companion for the weeks before Rosh Hashanah. Gentle prompts to help you come home to yourself without turning it into a chore.
And everything we make at Oriya is built around a single red thread — a quiet reminder that we belong to each other. You're not walking into this new year alone.
